Gell family of Hopton Hall, Wirksworth This collection contains papers relating to the main members of both senior and junior branches of the Gell family of Hopton from the 16th to the 20th centuries, together with title deeds and other estate records from the 13th to 20th centuries. A significant proportion of the total collection was accumulated and organised by Philip Lyttelton Gell (1852-1926) and these papers document the whole of his commercial career and personal life. Of particular importance are Philip Lyttelton Gell's business papers. These include a good, though incomplete, series relating to Gell's involvement with the British South Africa (BSA) Company as Director (1899-1917,1923-1925), Chairman (1917-1920) and President (1920-1923). The significance of Gell's papers derives from the complexity of the Company's history in the early 20th century. The Company divided its business into Administrative - matters, which concerned the Colonial Office - and Commercial - other activities. The Colonial Office papers in the The National Archives at Kew comprehensively cover the relations of the Company with the British Government and include copies of the Company's administrative minutes and agenda up to the time responsible government was granted to Southern Rhodesia in 1924. Records in the National Archives of Zimbabwe in Harare, Zimbabwe, comprise the administrative records of the Company during its rule of the area, but do not cover the activities of the London Office, a separate branch whose papers concern commercial activities and which document the internal organisation of the BSA Company and the interactions and conflicts amongst its Board of Directors. Many papers circulated to the Board were never included in its formal administrative agenda and minutes. It has been said that Philip Lyttelton Gell's papers are the most significant group extant to provide evidence of the internal policy of the BSA Company. Formal business papers include directors' reports and accounts together with reports of annual and extraordinary meetings of shareholders, 1899-1925 and board and committee minutes and agendas, 1902-1924. Other papers are grouped by subject. Especially noteworthy are the series D3287/BSA4: General papers relating to Southern Rhodesia and D3287/BSA5: Land Settlement. D3287/BSA4 contains documents which did not lend themselves to classification by specific subject such as Mining, Railways, and so on, and chiefly comprises political material - the Company's negotiations as to the future of its administration of the territory with the colonists themselves, the Colonial Office in London, the South African government and the diverse commissions and committees which deliberated on Rhodesia's future including the Cave Commission and the Buxton Committee. This group also contains Gell's correspondence with D O Malcolm, whose interests were strongly political and with Sir Drummond Chaplin at the time he was Administrator of Southern Rhodesia. D3287/BSA 5 relates largely to land settlement within Southern Rhodesia and to the commercial development of the area by the BSA Company. Many of the letters are from Mr P Inskipp, an Executive Director and later Commercial Manager of the Company. Another series of business papers (D3287/RTC) relates to the Rhodesia Cold Storage and Trading Co. Ltd. Philip Lyttelton Gell was chairman of this company from 1903 to 1924. It was first registered in London in 1903. In 1908 its name changed to the Rhodesia Trading Company and it went into voluntary liquidation in 1926. The documents comprise printed papers of the company - annual reports, accounts, etc - plus a much larger series of Gell's own correspondence, notes, etc., dating from 1903-1924. Each week the company issued a newsletter, highly miscellaneous in content, with general observations on the state of trade and any matters of note. These newsletters give a valuable perspective on the company and its activities. The founder of the company was Major, later Sir, Frank Johnson (1866-1943) whose ambitions were to amalgamate several cold storage and trading companies in the new colony and in Portuguese East Africa and then to develop links with a ranch in North Western Australia as a supplier of fresh meat to be transported to Rhodesia in the company's own ship. The company supported the development of Beira as the main port of entry for Southern Rhodesia in order to avoid over-dependence on Cape Town and Port Elizabeth. The Mashonaland railway line to Beira was crucial to this and it was Cecil Rhodes himself who had suggested the Australian undertaking to Frank Johnson. Further on in the company's life, Gell wanted the Rhodesia Trading Company to be the supplier of coal to the British Admiralty at Beira and to develop and diversify its activities to become the agency for advertising on Rhodesian railways. The Rhodesia Trading Company was always precarious financially. Its early vicissitudes are fully documented in Gell's papers, but documentation is relatively scarcer for the final years of its existence. D3287/BXA comprises the main series of papers relating to Philip Lyttelton Gell's business interests in Australia. British Exploration of Australasia Ltd was registered as a limited company in December 1900 and went into voluntary liquidation in June 1909. Its objectives were exploitation of mineral deposits in North Western Australia, largely dependent on the early development of rail access from Port Hedland to its mines in the Pilbara goldfields. Gell was Chairman of the board of directors from its inception, resigning in protest at the time of liquidation. He was an energetic Chairman, involved in all aspects of the company's administration and policy formation. However, the series of records is incomplete. There is much correspondence but no copies of directors' meetings minutes, nor is there a comprehensive set of the letters sent regularly to the Company Secretary by AE Morgans, the Managing Director throughout the life of the business. Chief correspondents with Gell are (John) Henry Birchenough (1853-1937) a director of the company from 1900-04; Sir William Sinclair Smith (1843-1916), another director of the company from 1897-1901 and NR Beeton and LA Brodrick (1864-1915) partners in the firm of Woolston, Beeton, Brodrick and West, stockbrokers to the company. D3287/MIL chiefly comprises letters from Alfred, later Viscount, Milner to Philip Lyttelton Gell. Milner and Philip Lyttelton Gell were friends and contemporaries and the former had hoped to find a post for Gell in his famous 'Kindergarten'. It was not to be and instead Gell became a director of the British South Africa Company. Milner's letters, which survive amongst Gell's papers, complement those of Gell to Milner in the Bodleian Library. In Derbyshire Record Office there are 696 letters, some fragile, dating from 1871 to 1925 on a wide variety of topics, including Balliol College matters and personal concerns. The two men corresponded less frequently as time passed and, in general, the letters after 1902 are less informative. There is also a small group of papers about Milner after his death, chiefly concerning a memorial to him, 1925-1928. Another section, D3287/1-131, comprises extensive series of family and estate papers of the Gells of Wirksworth and Hopton and related families from the 13th to the 20th centuries. These documents, more fully described below in Administrative History, are diverse in date and content but complement series held under the Derbyshire Record Office reference D258. The final section, D3287/114-131, comprises a small group of miscellaneous personal, family and business papers, 1835-c.1960, mostly accumulated by Philip Lyttelton Gell and either strays from or complementary to the main series of his business papers. These include more British South Africa Company material related to that in D3287/BSA. [13th-20th cent]